Sony Ericsson projection display phone

First mobile phones with built-in pico-projectors have been around for about a year now.

But, contrary to built-in cameras, to me pico-projectors in phones always looked only like a high tech gimmicks, with very limited market appeal and few real world use needs. After all, how often are you gonna use a projector in your phone and what for?

And finding the appropriate surface to project an image on, is another problem. Or not.

Sony Ericsson, in a patent application called “Mobile communication device with built-in projecting screen” may have stumbled on an interesting idea. Put a small projector into a phone, and also get a sliding and/or foldable screen surface in there too.

Done right, such projection screen shouldn’t take up too much space.

And, when you need a bigger display, just pull it out and you have much more screen real estate to watch a movie, browse the net and do other stuff on your projector phone.